


Speaker for the Dead

by bluebeholder



Category: Wizard101 (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Mythology - Freeform, Nonbinary Character, Past Character Death, Sad Ending, Storytelling, Transformation, Trauma, myth wizard player character, past WORLD death, post-arc 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29562906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: After their victory in Khrysalis, the young wizard returns to Wizard City to fulfill the promise they made to Pacal Redmask.Even when Azteca's story is told, the dead do not rest so easily.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Speaker for the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Playing a myth wizard is sometimes absolute agony from a game mechanic perspective (farming for monstrology minions is the curse I bear), but from a narrative perspective it's often just...phenomenal. Arc 1 with the Cyrus Drake subplot and Arc 2 with the myth forge are the two that spring immediately to mind. But there's something else, for me.
> 
> When Pacal Redmask asked me to remember Azteca, I had a backpack full of parrot minions. I was carrying a memory of Azteca to Khrysalis to fight beside me. Additionally, the whole thing with myth is that...you know, it's all stories. All about the legends and the tales and recalling the past to life. Who's more suited to telling the story of Azteca than someone who does it naturally because of the magic they wield?

The Fireglobe Theater is empty when they begin. 

Standing in the center of the amphitheater, tears slipping from glassy blue eyes as perfect as stars and equally hot, shadows whispering around their feet and strange dim shapes dancing on the walls, they speak. They have no audience, no one to hear, but the words must be spoken.

“I begin at the end,” they say, “as days become hours and hours become minutes, and as each minute becomes one lost lifetime in the dying world of Azteca. I have read the histories on the six Tzolk’in Stones in the Teocalli of Sacred War in the city of Three Points. I have heard from the voices of the world. And I have been charged with preserving and speaking their memory.”

Another wizard, with the magic of fire or life flowing under their skin, might have faltered. But they are a conjurer, a wizard of myth, and  _ every  _ spell they cast is a story. This, too, is a spell, but without cards or wands. 

They stand in the empty theater and speak through the moonlit night, their words falling like sand from an hourglass to the ground.

When they are found, those who came to bring them away from the theater can only sit and listen. 

For nine days, their magic sustains them as they speak. All of Wizard City hears of what has happened, and visitors from around the Spiral come to hear the tale of doomed Azteca. They lay bare its glories and its deceits alike, speaking the truth of it all.

On the tenth day, when they tell of them final days of Azteca, they  _ collapse _ . 

They have no more to give. They fall like a comet with the name of Xibalba on their lips and their golden magic fades around them like a dying sunset. In the audience there are healers, and they restore what they can, and force the wizard to eat and drink. 

“You don’t understand,” they say, when Merle Ambrose visits them at their bedside. “I can’t stop. I promised.”

“The story of Azteca has been told,” Ambrose says, compassionate. “You have fulfilled your promise, young wizard.”

They stare at him, at his old, wise face. “There’s more to do,” they say. “I have killed my enemies and saved my friends and I’m not sure which is which anymore. I made a Spiral Key in the Myth Forge and that opened me to the Spiral and  _ I should have died on that anvil _ . Maybe I _ did  _ die, and this body is just hourglass sand. I have watched worlds die and visited worlds that died before I had a chance to save them. And I have met restless ghosts and seen the fall of empires and I will tell their stories until the sand in my hourglass has fallen away.”

The words are not the words of a child. They are too much for the mouth of someone who has barely twenty-five years. Ambrose sighs. “You have  _ always _ been an exceptional student.”

“I am the speaker for the dead,” they say. “And I will not be silenced.”

For every wonder of the Spiral, there is a tragedy. The speaker for the dead sets out from Wizard City to collect the stories of the dead. No one can—or  _ will _ —turn them from their quest.

No tale of the dead is too small to notice. From the grand story of the fall of Celestia to the tragic love of Lok Soo Chang and Matsuo Sato, from the glories of dead knights of Avalon to the death of Sylvia Drake, the stories are told. They carry the strength of every ghost of Dragonspyre in their hands, and the sagas of ancient Grizzleheim warriors on their shoulders. 

They tell of villains. The story of Krokhotep’s living cruelty and ghostly redemption moves listeners to tears. Lord Bramble’s tragedy makes Wysterians fall silent, and look at the weeds under their feet with regret. All the pettiness of Tse-tse Snaketail is told with pity for him. Even Malistaire, now twice dead, has his tale of pain told in full. 

And they tell of ancient heroes. Queen Elissa, and her determination to save the spirits of her people. King Neza the Poet, who sacrificed himself to save his people. The ghostly warriors of the Last Bastion, who faced the Shadow. 

In the Royal Museum of Marleybone, they walk from one artifact to the next, telling the curators the stories of those who once owned the spears and pots taken from tombs on faraway worlds, and the curators look at each other in shame.

“I don’t  _ care  _ what you feel,” they say, when the head of the museum asks them to stop. Under their gaze, cold as falling through the Spiral’s sky, the head of the museum cringes. “Your place is full of stolen stories that beg to be told. I promised to tell them.”

In Wizard City, they follow a glowing compass deep under the streets, to find the tales of the angry dead and bring them to light. They stand on the Commons and speak aloud the ancient tales of Grubb, Lord Nightshade, Rattlebones, and the Harvest Lord. All these nightmares are shown in unvarnished truth: their evil in life and death laid out for all to see.

“You are disturbing the other students,” Cyrus Drake says. “These stories could give  _ me  _ bad dreams. Besides, I thought you only spoke well of the dead.”

“I tell their stories,” they say, with the hiss of Medusa and howl of Orthrus echoing in their voice. “Didn’t  _ you _ teach me how? Didn’t  _ you _ teach me to use the names of myth to summon them forward? All the dead have names, Professor Drake, and I  _ will _ speak them to remember their legends.”

They speak until their throat is raw, until there are no more tears in their eyes, until their words come as dry as sand falling in an hourglass. Past and present blur together, and when they speak for the dead, a listener can see the shining shades of the legend as clearly as if they were real, summoned by the power of the myth the speaker has made. The spirits shine, if only for a moment, standing proud as if they live again.

“But you  _ cannot  _ bring the dead to life again,” the Dalai Lamba says gently, taking their hands, when they come to Kembaalung.

Their hands are pale and wasted, fragile as ancient bones and cold as a grave. “No one is dead as long as their name is spoken,” they say, equally gently. “And I  _ promised _ to speak their names. To tell their stories.”

A long year slips away. The Shadow remains silent, still, dead. And they tell its tale, too, speaking of the Umbra Legion and the servants caught in the web. They tell of the Shadow Queen herself, standing in front of Ambrose’s desk and looking him in the eye as they tell of her fate and her fall, that other lost student ravaged by power and pain, the dark mirror of the speaker for the dead.

He does not shed a tear. Nor does he look remorseful. Only serene as ever, and they  _ want _ to hate him. 

But the point is not in what the living do. 

The point is in the memory of the dead. 

And so time passes.

With ticking and grinding and the silent song of the sun, the celestial calendar spins, the clock chimes, the hourglass turns over, the shadow on the sundial moves. 

And they come at last to Azteca again. 

The last shard of the comet has fallen. All that remains is devastation,  _ true  _ devastation, a burned and blasted world. Some stubborn flowers and trees cling to life on the edge of craters. Rivers and waterways are choked by stone and mud. Houses and pyramids and pillars are crumpled, smashed to pieces. The sky is still sickly, warped, hiding the moon. 

Most of the surviving Aztecosaurs sought safety in other places, like the safe haven of Xol Akmul, far away from their world. All that remain here are the Hungry Dead, emerging from the Cenote and the tombs, looking for what is gone. 

The speaker stands in the Zocalo, beside the great shattered calendar that once spun with magic, showing the turn of the future. In their mind’s eye, the great Aztecosaur warriors walk gravely around the plaza, and the mystics stand and confer beneath the high golden sun. All is silent. 

“Minutes become hours, and hours become days, and each day is a hundred living lifetimes,” they say aloud. “I have named the dead of Azteca before the Spiral and the story of this world has been told to every ear that can hear. This world’s memory has been preserved, the count of days and count of years remembered for all time. Now I end at the beginning.”

As they stand in the center of the ruined Zocalo, sand falls from glassy blue eyes as blank as the stars and equally distant, shadows howling softly around their feet and familiar golden figures in procession around them, they are  _ finally  _ silent. An audience across the Spiral has heard the words they spoke.

This world is empty when they end.

**Author's Note:**

> "...when their loved ones died, a believer would arise beside the grave to be the Speaker for the Dead, and say what the dead one would have said, but with full candor, hiding no faults and pretending no virtues. Those who came to such services sometimes found them painful and disturbing, but there were many who decided that their life was worthwhile enough, despite their errors, that when they died a Speaker should tell the truth for them."  
> \- _Ender's Game_


End file.
